Saturday, January 2, 2010

2010, here we come

Starting pitcher:
M.C. O'Connor

Your 2010 Giants play their first spring game on March 3rd. The real thing starts on April 5th in Houston, and that's only 13 weeks away. So little time with all the work we have to do! We'll just have to soldier on manfully. David Pinto at Baseball Musings is doing an alphabetical look at major-leaguers called "Players A-to-Z." Yesterday he covered Matt Cain. There's a great Day-by-Day Database associated with the site that's easy to search, and you can get all your "splits" with a few clicks. Check out both links.

Later this month the arbitration figures will be exchanged, and the hearings will take place next month. Tim Lincecum will get a richly-deserved raise. For 2010, the Giants will spend $18.5 M on Zito, $13.6 M on Rowand, $10 M on Renteria, $6 M each on FSanchez and DeRosa, and $4.5 M each on Affeldt and Cain. That's $63.1 M. Brian Wilson and Jonathan Sanchez are, like Lincecum, looking at a salary case next month. I expect they'll get raises, too. They--together--cost about $1 M last season. Last year's payroll was $82.6 M, down from the 2005-2007 $90.2 M peak. If the three young pitchers come away with $20 M, that doesn't leave much to work with if you assume the Giants won't go over $90 million.

All the more reason to hope our young, cheap guys really deliver. They certainly did in 2009, with Pablo Sandoval joining the four aforementioned pitchers to give us an impressive Gang of Five. Breakout candidates for 2010 include Buster Posey and Madison Bumgarner, of course, and we hope to get some impressive 'pen work from Sergio Romo, Waldis Joaquin, and Dan Runzler. We need a young batsmen, along with Buster, to step up and contribute some offensive value to the club. I don't see a free agent solution at this point, and the thought of Brian Sabean trading talent away for another FSanchez gives me the shudders. So it's John Bowker and Travis Ishikawa and Nate Schierholtz, my friends, unless I'm leaving somebody out. Our pitchers were the 4th best in baseball last year in FIP and 2nd best in ERA. They were 1st in ERA+ and 2nd in WHIP. Will they do it again? One thing for sure, we are certainly counting on it.

Anonymous is right. Mark & Co have raised the standards so much that a guy like me who mostly enjoys saying what sucks and what's cool seems kinda silly.I actually wrote a thoughtful little comment yesterday but it was sucked into cyberspace unsaved. It was omething about that odd stat r/t Cain about how many men were on base when he gave up triples. Isn't that a peculiar stat? What is one supposed to do with that knowledge?

Speaking of utility guys, with DeRosa and Juan Uribe, one thing the Giants have is flexibility. Although no one (see note 1) wants Brian Sabean to make a trade for fear of making a bad one (see note 2), there seems to be a lot of guys on the Giants who could be packaged up without leaving any holes in the defense (see note 3). Someone on Lefty Malo raised the possibility of Miguel Cabrera. Miguel Cabrera is owed a little more than $20 million dollars per year for the next six years. The Tigers have said that they are not trading him, although everything else they have done pretty much screams "FIRE SALE." The Giants could give the Tigers a number of bodies (pick from, say, DeRosa, Renteria, Uribe, Bowker, Lewis, Rowand, Schierholz, Velez, but not Posey) and add some of our many promising young arms. The Tigers would gain by getting this salary of $120+ million off the books, and we would gain a hitter deemed most like Henry Aaron at a young age. He is 26. The Tigers may be telling the truth, or their asking price may be way to high. But what the Giants are doing is lining up enough flexible talent to possibly pull off a trade that would substantially improve the club. I say *possibly* because no one expects Brian Sabean to do such a radical thing. The point is that he may not be done for the season.(note 1: Ron excepted)(note 2: No one wants Brian Sabean to sign any free agents either for fear of signing a bad one, so I guess no one wants Brian Sabean to do anything at all)(note 3: Aaron Rowand notwithstanding)